Patrick Hennessy

Patrick Hennessy writes about politics for the Telegraph.

The Liberal Democrats, the high priests of infrastructure spending, wasted little time in putting the boot into Peter Mandelson after the Labour peer became the latest figure to attack the HS2 high-speed link.

Baker misses the point, however. We may not be able to afford to hop on to a private jet but we can (or at least businesses can) afford the super-fast broadband which will connect more and more of us remotely over the next couple of decades and remove any lingering doubt that HS2 is a £42billion white elephant.

At least Mandelson admitted in his Financial Times article (a few days after Alistair Darling declared himself an "HS2-sceptic" in my Sunday Telegraph interview with him) that Labour went into the last election promoting HS2 as a "politically driven decision"… Read More

Younger adults are more idealistic than the elderly. People's voting habits tend to drift rightward as they get older. It's axiomatic … or so we thought.

According to Messrs Ipsos Mori, who have undertaken what is billed as the "first substantial analysis of the UK's generational voting intentions", such suppositions are ready to be challenged.

The company found that among "Generation Y" – the cohort of voters born after 1980 – support for the Conservatives has doubled since David Cameron became leader in 2005.

Tory support among voters aged 33 and under now stands at a relatively healthy 20.5 per cent (although Labour is still more popular in this age group). It is elderly Tories who appear to be deserting the party, detaching themselves to emerge either as floating voters or supporters of Ukip.

In the late-1990s, the "Burma Road" – the main parliamentary corridor on which lobby journalists are housed – used to echo to a heavy footfall which meant Gordon Brown's team were on manoeuvres.

Ed Balls and Charlie Whelan (for it was they) would tramp round with bits of paper or, more excitingly, without.

It was during these visits that many of Labour's slogans for the 1997 general election became common currency. One of them, "22 Tory tax rises", was deemed to be so effective that it could never be changed – even when more increases came in, other tax rises had to drop off the bottom of the list so that the total remained on the onomatopoeically satisfying 22.

Whelan would continually stress, when briefing about Labour's pre-election spending plans, that the party would be "tougher than the Tories" when in… Read More

Ed Miliband achieved a political first today when he used Have I Got News For You's "odd one out" round as his inspiration for a political speech.

One wonders what the audience at Google's Big Tent event in Hertfordshire made of it when images flashed on to the screen of Willy Wonka, Margaret Hodge, the Labour leader's Marxist father Ralph, and … Google. Which was the odd one out?

The answer was Ralph Miliband – because all the rest were capitalists.

Once this rather bizarre device was (thankfully) out of the way, Ed made his main point, which was a simple one: it is unfair, and wrong, that big companies like Google don't pay more tax.

He used a Google statement put out before the company's 2004 flotation to ram the point home. "A company… Read More

The Europa League – whose final takes place in Amsterdam tonight – is the competition the big football clubs don't want to be in, the unloved junior sibling of the Champions League.

Today's Prime Minister's Questions brought it to mind as stand-ins Nick Clegg and Harriet Harman played out a grim, goalless draw in a sparsely populated House of Commons.

Ms Harman made much of the absence, once again, of David Cameron (although you have to ask what really is so reprehensible about the Prime Minister travelling to Washington for talks with the US president) – and apparently he has only been at the PMQs Dispatch Box once in the last eight weeks.

Neither Clegg nor Harriet is known for comic timing and such attempts at humour as there… Read More

At a dinner at the 2008 Conservative conference the conversation turned, as it so often does, to the party's leadership. My companions, both MPs, assumed David Cameron would win the forthcoming general election and serve most or all of two terms. Speculation centred on a leadership contest in around 2018.

"I'll give you three candidates," one of the MPs said. "George Osborne, Boris Johnson… and Jeremy Hunt."

At the time, Osborne was the clear "continuity Cameron" candidate while Boris had just been elected Mayor of London and his star was in the ascendant.

My eyebrows rose at the third choice: at the time I knew little about Hunt, even though he had been appointed shadow culture… Read More

Like the rest of the Westminster Village, I am fascinated by the surprise news that Jo Johnson, Boris's younger brother and Conservative MP for Orpington, has been parachuted into Downing Street with a ministerial post and a plum job as head of a revamped "Thatcher-style" policy unit.

It is, it should be said, very thoughtful of David Cameron to fan the flames of a new sibling rivalry, especially after all the fun he has had down the years taunting Labour over its own fraternal struggle involving the Miliband brothers. It gives us in the media another running story – and you know how we enjoy those.

Jo Johnson is highly rated by many observers. So at, risk of attracting the eagle eye of my Lobby colleague from The Independent, John Rentoul, and his series "Questions to which the answer i… Read More

"I am the life patron of the Oxfordshire Bee Keepers' Association." David Cameron's proud declaration provoked some jokes about the Government's "Plan Bee", and provided a surreal ending for the first bout of Prime Minister's Questions since Budget Day, five weeks ago.

It was not a vintage clash – with some observers claiming they were quite prepared to wait even longer for the next session – but was an important one in that both Cameron and Ed Miliband chose their weapons for what will be a lengthy battle leading up to the 2015 general election.

Ed eschewed the economy to concentrate on the NHS – specifically problems at A & E units, and English hospitals operating dangerously over capacity during the winter. He ended by deploying the line that Labour leaders down… Read More

David Mellor, it is fair to say, is not a fan of David Cameron. Last year the former "Minister for Fun" and noted Chelsea fan called the Prime Minister "rather a shallow, callow sort of guy who doesn’t have too many aims and ambitions and who can’t even get basic judgment calls right."

Mellor also demanded last year "shouldn't leaders behave like leaders" and called for the removal of George Osborne as Chancellor.

So he has abundant form. Nevertheless, he has chosen the day of Lady Thatcher's funeral to launch a new tirade, the terms of which could not be decribed as measured.

"I thought you were going to put to me what Dave also said, that we are all Thatcherites now," Mellor told Sky News.

For all the millions of words written about Margaret Thatcher and her legacy this week the most interesting political intervention, I reckon, has just been made by one of her successors.

Tony Blair (for it is he) has used an article in the centenary issue of the New Statesman to warn Ed Miliband (although the Labour leader is nowhere named in the piece) that the party at present is dangerously close to where it was before he arrived, as he would see it, to save it.

"The Labour Party is back as the party opposing 'Tory cuts', highlighting the cruel consequences of the Conservative policies on welfare and representing the disadvantaged and vulnerable," he writes.

You can just hear the response in some quarters in Labour: "You say that like it'… Read More